Re: Yes, it's time (RE: Is it time to stop printing journals?)

[Peter Banks <pbanks@bankspub.com>]

Why haven't consumer magazine adapted similar strategies can be 
summed up with one statement "Show me the money."

Magazines are a risky and often low-margin business. Life has now 
died three times, and the obituary list filled with countless 
other seemingly well-established titles. The 10-year survival 
rate for magazine start-ups is less than 20%.

Magazines have two primary sources of revenue, advertising and 
subscriptions, neither of which has so far translated very well 
online, and perhaps never will. An ad-stuffed title like Vogue, 
say, might have hundreds of advertisers. There is simply no way 
to offer so many advertisers compelling editorial positions 
online. Online subscriptions are not well accepted and are often 
tied to print subscriptions.

The few titles that have so far been successful online are 
atypical. For example, Consumer Reports never had advertising and 
its database-driven content is well-suited to online 
subscriptions.

There is also the fact that paper continues to have some 
hard-to-replace attributes--convenience, portability, stability, 
and the ability to control production values (100 pound no. 2 
paper will always have an appeal for high-end readers and 
advertisers.)

Successful consumer publishers will probably not do away with 
paper, but deploy it as part of an integrated cross-media 
strategy.

Peter Banks
Banks Publishing
Publications Consulting and Services
pbanks@bankspub.com
www.bankspub.com
www.associationpublisher.com/blog/

On 4/27/07 10:14 PM, "adam hodgkin" <adam.hodgkin@gmail.com> wrote:

> A rather delayed response to this thread, which I found very 
> interesting. It has been leading me to puzzle out why the 
> consumer magazine market has not gone in the same direction (at 
> least it has not gone there yet)
>
> http://exacteditions.blogspot.com/2007/04/journals-and-consumer-magazines.html
>
> I have also been wondering why a similar aggregation solution 
> for consumer magazines, seems so unattractive. Can one imagine 
> a Science Direct for all the major consumer magazines? It would 
> be a rather monstrous compilation, but does that not tell us 
> something about how much the big research libraries really 
> wanted/needed solutions like Science Direct? Only with big and 
> efficient aggregators such as Elsevier could the STM library 
> world have moved so quickly towards an electronic solution for 
> their patrons. Libraries are of course vastly more important to 
> the STM market than they are to the consumer magazine 
> publishers.
>
> However, it seems likely that there is some role for 
> comprehensive aggregation services for digital books and 
> digital magazines. Adam
>
>
> On 3/31/07, Rick Anderson <rickand@unr.edu> wrote:
>>> I am curious to hear whether this is a commonly held sentiment.
>>
>> I wouldn't call Scott's statement an expression of sentiment; it
>> was an observation of what's happening among his patrons.  And I
>> would largely second it from the perspective of my institution.
>> A few years ago we instituted a strict and explicit program of
>> online preference for our journals -- if a journal is available
>> online and someone wants us to acquire it in print, that person
>> must submit a written justification to the Dean of Libraries.  I
>> think I can count on one hand the number of requests that we've
>> received.  The fact is that printed paper is a lousy format for
>> distributing journal content.  It's a great format for extended
>> reading, but a terrible one for any other kind of
>> information-seeking.
>>
>>> If this equation has indeed flipped in a matter of a half-dozen
>>> or so years, this ranks as one of the most important periods in
>>> scholarly communication history.
>>
>> I don't think there's any question that this is exactly the case.
>> What's been remarkable to me is the range of responses to these
>> dramatic changes -- library patrons have largely taken them in
>> stride, few of them seemingly aware of the fundamental and
>> radical nature of the changes that have taken place in the
>> marketplace that serves them.  Many of us in the library
>> profession, meanwhile (though by no means all of us), are in
>> denial, defending our traditional territory and furiously
>> continuing to focus on the materials that our patrons are least
>> interested in.
>>
>> Is it time to stop printing journals?  Yes, and past time -- even
>> in the humanities, where affection for print has tended to
>> linger.  Regardless of content, ink-on-paper is a highly wasteful
>> and ineffective way to distribute discrete, article-sized chunks
>> of information.
>>
>> It's also, by the way, time to stop thinking in terms of journal
>> "issues" -- the issue is a meaningless construct that made sense
>> only in the print realm.
>>
>> Rick Anderson
>> Dir. of Resource Acquisition
>> University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
>> rickand@unr.edu